Breaking News, July 3

Sri Lankan schools will remain shut for a week as the country faces a severe fuel crisis. The Education Ministry on Sunday declared that all government schools across the nation will be given holidays from July 4 to 8. READ MORE

Independent Lok Sabha Member of Parliament Navneet Rana, along with her husband MLA Ravi Rana met the family of chemist Umesh Kolhe, who was killed in Maharashtra's Amravati for supporting suspended BJP leader Nupur Sharma. Kolhe's murder was related to social media posts supporting Sharma, police said on Saturday, even as the case was handed over to the National Investigation Agency (NIA). READ MORE 

Covid-19 is on a rise again in the southern states of India, as Tamil Nadu and Kerala have been witnessing a high number of fresh cases. For the third consecutive day on Sunday, Tamil Nadu had reported over 2,000 new coronavirus infections as the state logged 2,672 cases. READ MORE 

A top Lashker-e-Taiba terrorist, overpowered by locals and handed over to the police, was reported to be an active member of the saffron party who was recently selected as its IT and social media cell in charge of the minority morcha in Jammu province. READ MORE 

Several people were hit by gunshots in a shopping mall in Copenhagen on Sunday, the Danish police said. Copenhagen police said that one person has been arrested in connection with the shooting at the Field’s shopping mall, which is close to the city's airport. Police tweeted that “several people have been hit,” but gave no other details.

Two people were killed after their motorcycle collided head-on with an SUV in Uttar Pradesh's Saharanpur district on Sunday, police said. The deceased were identified as Pankaj (20) and his friend Suraj (22). The incident took place in Badgaon village, they said.

A large chunk of Alpine glacier broke loose Sunday afternoon and slid down a mountainside in Italy, sending ice, snow and rock slamming into hikers on a popular trail on the peak killing at least five and injuring eight, authorities said.

The Jammu and Kashmir Traffic Police on Sunday issued an advisory for tourists, pilgrims and truck movement on the Srinagar-Jammu national highway during the Amarnath Yatra.

The family of a 45-year-old autorickshaw driver, who was declared brain dead at AIIMS here, donated his organs, helping save the lives of four persons. Karu Singh had come to Delhi on June 30 from Bihar to fix a marriage alliance for his daughter, a doctor said.

At least 12 Indian fishermen were arrested by the Sri Lankan Navy for allegedly poaching in the country's territorial waters, an official said on Sunday. "The fishermen were arrested near Point Pedro between 5 and 5:30 this evening (local time),” Sri Lankan Navy spokesman Captain Indika de Silva told PTI.

The bodies of a 70-year-old man and his wife were found with injury marks at their house in Uttar Pradesh's Agra district on Sunday, police said.
The family members have alleged that the suspects entered the house with an intention of looting the couple as cash and jewellery worth lakhs of rupees were missing. Agra Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Prabhakar Chaudhary said he has ordered formation of three teams to investigate the case.

A deputy general manager at the Lalitpur power plant, who was en route to Rajasthan from Uttar Pradesh to meet his daughters, was killed after his car overturned on National Highway-27, police said on Sunday.

Four members of a family on Sunday were killed when a speeding bus hit their motorcycle in the Kotwali area here, police said. The deceased were identified as Sarvan (23), his daughter Lucky (7), his sister-in-law Pragya (30) and his mother Maharaja (52), all residents of Dhaurahra village, they said.

Engineering firm NTPC–GE Power Services Pvt Ltd has bagged contracts to build balance of systems for two power projects with total capacity of 325 MW at Shajapur Solar Park in Madhya Pradesh. NTPC–GE Power Services Pvt Ltd (NGSL) has received two awards from NTPC Renewable Energy Limited (NTPC-REL) for engineering, procurement and construction of balance of system at two sites with 105 MW and 220 MW capacity, respectively, along with operation and maintenance for three years, the company said in a statement. The 'balance of system' at a solar energy plant comprises all the supporting equipments used in installation and functioning of the main power generation unit.

Senior BJP leader and Union Home Minister Amit Shah asserted on Sunday that the next 30 to 40 years will be the era of his party and India will become a "vishwa guru" (world leader). While proposing the political resolution at the BJP national executive meeting here, Shah said "dynastic politics, casteism and politics of appeasement" were the "greatest sins" and the reason behind the country's sufferings over the years. Briefing reporters on his speech, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said Shah cited the BJP's win in a series of polls to assert that it underlined people's approval of the party's "politics of development and performance" and called for ending the politics of family rule, casteism and appeasement.

India's Tejas light combat aircraft has emerged as the top choice for Malaysia as the Southeast Asian nation looks at replacing its ageing fleet of fighter jets and the two sides are holding negotiations to take forward the procurement process. Malaysia has narrowed down on the Indian aircraft notwithstanding stiff competition from China's JF-17 jet, South Korea's FA-50 and Russia's Mig-35 as well as the Yak-130 plane, Chairman and Managing Director of Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL), R Madhavan, told news agency PTI in an interview.

Asserting that democracy is India's soul, Jammu and Kashmir Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha said elections in the union territory will "surely" take place after the completion of the ongoing electoral revision and that the restoration of statehood would follow at an "appropriate time". Sinha's remarks came at an event here late on Saturday after veteran Congress leader Karan Singh reiterated the demands to conduct assembly elections and also restore Jammu and Kashmir's statehood. The event was organised to felicitate Singh for his contribution to the erstwhile state. "Democracy is India's soul. Democracy and India are synonymous with each other. The prime minister and the country's home minister have said it many times in the Parliament that elections (in Jammu and Kashmir) will take place," Sinha said.

A 38-year-old man was killed while three others were injured after they were attacked by a group of men here, police said on Sunday. Five accused have been arrested in connection with the incident, they said. The incident took place late on Saturday night at Ghumnahwa village here when five people attacked the men with knives, killing Dilbahar on the spot, they said. Three others, Khurshid, Ibrar and Khurshid, were injured in the attack and were rushed to the hospital, police said, adding that Ibrar, who was in a serious condition, was later rushed to Lucknow. Superintendent of Police Rajesh Kumar Saxena said an FIR has been lodged and five accused have been arrested. Three of them have been identified as Sartaj, Sufiyan, Zaid, he said, adding that the incident was a fallout of the rivalry over village head election. 

A wild elephant killed a 25-year-old man and destroyed two houses in a village in Chhattisgarh's Jashpur district, forest officials said on Sunday. The incident took place on Saturday night in Khari Jhirirya village in Kunkuri area, they said. “The jumbo entered the village and destroyed two houses before moving towards the house of the victim, identified as Anuj Tigga. On hearing the noise, Tigga and his two brothers came out of home and found the elephant busy eating jackfruit in their premises," an official here said. All of a sudden, the jumbo charged towards them, caught hold of Tigga with its trunk and trampled him to death. His brothers managed to escape from the spot, the official said.

Three people were killed when a container vehicle collided with a truck in Dungarpur district of Rajasthan on Saturday night, officials said. The accident occurred on the Udaipur-Ahmedabad highway under the Bicchiwara police station area, they said. The container vehicle hit the truck from behind. Three people who were in the container vehicle died, SHO Ranjeet Singh said. The bodies have been shifted to the mortuary of the district hospital and their family members were informed. Postmortem will be conducted after the family members arrive, police said. 

Fund raising by listed companies through private placement of corporate bonds dropped 39 per cent to Rs 32,405 crore in the first two months of the current financial year, and outlook for the rest of the fiscal is uncertain too on expectation of further hike in intetest rates. In comparison, Rs 53,253 crore was raised through the route during April-May 2021-22, data with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) showed. Notably, fund raising through the route plunged to a six-year low in 2021-22 to Rs 5.88 lakh crore owing to good performance of the equities and aggressive fund disbursal by banks at lower interest rate. "Moreover, the outlook for the rest of the financial year is quite uncertain as interest rates are expected to firm up further, liquidity to get tighter and inflation to remain high. In such an environment, aggregate demand is likely to remain subdued thereby suppressing the demand for credit as well," Sandeep Bagla, CEO Trust MF, said.

Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Sunday dissolved the national, state and district executive bodies of all its organisations, including the youth and the women's wing, with immediate effect. Though no official reason has been given, the move is seen as an attempt to revamp the SP after the Lok Sabha bypoll debacle in the party's bastions Rampur and Azamgarh. The party's Uttar Pradesh president Naresh Uttam will, however, continue to remain in his position, the party said.

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As many as 110 more COVID-19 cases were reported in Assam, the highest single-day tally in over four months, pushing the caseload in the state to 7,25,036, a National Health Mission (NHM) bulletin said on Sunday. No fresh death due to the virus was reported with the toll remaining unchanged at 6,639. Apart from that, 1,347 coronavirus-infected patients have died due to other reasons since 2020, the bulletin said. The state, which had been witnessing an upward spiral in COVID-19 infections since mid-June, last reported over 100 cases in mid-February.

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China's top diplomat on Saturday arrived on his first visit to Myanmar since the military seized power last year to attend a regional meeting that the government said was a recognition of its legitimacy and opponents protested as a violation of peace efforts. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi will join counterparts from Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam in a meeting of the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation group in the central city of Bagan, a UNESCO World Heritage site. The grouping is a Chinese-led initiative that includes the countries of the Mekong Delta, a potential source of regional tensions due to an increasing number of hydroelectric projects that are altering the flow and raising concerns of ecological damage.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Aditynath on Sunday visited Shri Bhagyalakshmi Temple abutting the historic Charminar located. Yogi, who spent about 20 minutes at the temple, offered special prayers. He was accompanied by BJP Telangana president Bandi Sanjay Kumar, Rajya sabha member K Laxman and MLA Raja Singh. "Yogiji was supposed to visit the temple when he came here to campaign for BJP during GHMC elections (in 2020). However due paucity of time, he could not visit that time. He told us that whenever he comes to Hyderabad next time he would visit the temple and offer prayers. So, to fulfil that he came today and offer prayers and aarti also," Raja Singh. 

A newborn girl, who was allegedly sold by her parents due to poverty, in Odisha’s Jajpur district, has been rescued, police said. The incident came to the fore after a child development project officer of Dasarathpur block filed a recent police complaint that Suresh Das and his wife sold the infant to a childless couple for Rs 7,000, they said. The baby girl was rescued from Champeipal village on Friday evening and handed over to the child welfare committee, a senior police officer said. No one has been arrested yet, he said. The parents, however, denied selling their daughter. “We are very poor and already have two daughters… So, we decided to give the newborn to one of our relatives,” Das claimed. 

Environmentalists are gearing up for another round of battle over the Metro-3 car shed project, which the new Eknath Shinde-led government in Maharashtra has proposed to move back to Mumbai's Aarey forest, an 1,800 acre area which is often termed as the city's 'green lung'. Apart from leopards, some 300 different varieties of flora and fauna are found in the Aarey forest, located in suburban Goregaon and adjacent to the Sanjay Gandhi National Park. According to environment activists, the forest not only provides fresh air to people of the city, but it also a key habitat for the wildlife, including some endemic species. The forest has some five lakh trees, and also has a couple of rivers and some lakes flowing through it, they say.

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With the main opposition in Tamil Nadu, the AIADMK facing tough times with an intense power struggle taking place, the ruling DMK is cruising along without much problems at the ground level. Since the 2019 general elections, the ruling DMK has been winning back to back elections- the rural local body polls, then the 2021 assembly elections and the urban local body polls of 2022. The AIADMK stands vanquished after ruling the state from 2011 to 2021. The larger than life persona and shrewd political moves by the late J. Jayalalithaa had ensured that the AIADMK won back to back elections. However after the passing away of Jayalalithaa in December 2016, an intense power struggle commenced in the AIADMK with the former aide of Jayalalithaa, VK Sasikala and her family trying to take over the party. Sasikala was announced as the interim general secretary of the party and was on her way to assume the Chief Minister's post.

A senior UN official for Libya on Saturday condemned the storming of the parliament's headquarters in the east of the oil-rich country as part of protests in several cities the previous day against the political class and deteriorating economic conditions. Hundreds of protesters marched in the streets of the capital, Tripoli, and other Libyan cities on Friday, with many attacking and setting fire to government buildings, including the House of Representatives in the eastern city of Tobruk.

The four-day old Shiv Sena-BJP government will face the floor test on July 4 during the special two-day session of the Legislative Assembly beginning on Sunday. The election to the post of the Speaker of the House will be held Sunday after the House proceedings begin at 11 am, an official said. Sena MLA and Uddhav Thackeray loyalist Rajan Salvi is the candidate of the Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress combine for the Speaker's election. He is pitted against first-time BJP legislator Rahul Narvekar.

A school headmaster in Uttar Pradesh's Bareilly district has been suspended for allegedly pelting stones at female teachers, following a scuffle. The headmaster, Khurshid Ali, has been accused of secretly making videos of female teachers while Ali has alleged that the teachers were working on their laptops instead of teaching children. The incident took place in Saidpur Primary school in Faridpur and a video clip of the incident has gone viral on the social media. Ali told the media that he was making the video to present it as a proof to senior school officials.

 A married woman has been arrested for allegedly dumping her lover's body near a canal in Parikshatgarh area of Uttar Pradesh's Meerut district with help of her brothers and concealing evidence, police said. The man Sajid had reportedly consumed poison in the presence of the woman, the police added on Sunday. Superintendent of Police (Rural), Meerut, Keshav Mishra said that the woman belonged to Sajid's village Laliyana in Kithore area and they had a love affair for more than two decades. The woman got married in Parikshatgarh area where Sajid had a welding shop. The Meerut SP added that Sajid was also married and his wife had died.

Goa Police on Saturday arrested a man and a woman for allegedly assuming false identities and checking into a starred hotel at Dona Paula in the state where the rebel MLAs from Maharashtra were staying, an official said. The woman is affiliated to a political party, he said, without disclosing the accused's names. The duo stayed in the hotel for a day under false names and have been arrested for impersonation, said inspector Suraj Gawas of Panaji police. Police had thrown a tight security ring around the hotel after some 50 MLAs supporting rebel Shiv Sena leader Eknath Shinde checked in on June 29. Even mediapersons were not allowed inside.

A pregnant woman was killed while her husband and minor daughter were injured after the motorcycle on which they were travelling was hit by a tanker here on Saturday, police said. The incident took place at Mirzapur road under the Gopiganj police station area, they said. Station House Officer (SHO), Gopiganj, Brijesh Kumar Singh said, "One Chhotu, his wife Patti Devi (25) and five-year-old daughter Riya were travelling on a motorcycle when the two-wheeler was hit by a tanker from behind." Devi, who was pregnant, came under the truck and died on the spot. Chhotu and Riya were thrown to the other side of the road. They are undergoing treatment at a hospital, he said. The tanker driver has been arrested, the police said. 

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A 35-year-old New York man is facing trespassing and stalking charges after authorities said he entered two New York City residences linked to the famed singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. Police say the suspect, who was arrested Friday, entered one of the residential buildings, located in the city's Tribeca neighbourhood, on March 26. He walked “through an unlocked door and remained unlawfully" before fleeing on foot when security told him to leave, investigators said.

Following the terror incident in Udaipur, Jan Adhikar Party (JAP) President Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav has claimed that one of the accused Riyaz Attari was a Rajasthan BJP Minority wing leader and a close associate of former Rajasthan Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria. In a video statement released on Saturday, Yadav has demanded a high-level inquiry of the gruesome incident to ascertain the role of BJP leaders and their connection with the killers. "The person involved in the gruesome terror incident of Udaipur was a member of BJP Minority wing and he is seen in a photo clicked with former Rajasthan Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria. We have demanded from the authority to conduct an inquiry from the Anti-Terrorism Squad to investigate the conspiracy by the BJP and who are the people behind the incident. The investigation should be based on telephonic conversations of the accused and their phone locations whom they are connected with. The investigation should come in public domain," the JAP President said.

Climate activist Licypriya Kangujam on Saturday lauded authorities here for clearing plastic waste from the banks of the Yamuna river behind the Taj Mahal. The 10-year-old activist from Manipur also shared on Twitter photos from her visits to the river bank last month and on Saturday. In the photo from her last month's visit, Kangujam is seen standing amidst plastic waste and holding a placard reading "Behind the beauty of Taj Mahal is plastic pollution". In the photo from her visit on Saturday, the young activist is seen flashing the victory sign with no garbage around.

A 63-year-old man and his wife were not allowed to board their flight at the Cochin International Airport in the early hours of Saturday after he uttered the word "bomb" when asked what was in their luggage, police said. They said the couple, who were going abroad, reached the airport around 1.30 am. As the staff at the check-in counter asked them what was in their luggage, the irked husband said "bomb", triggering a panic, following which airport security was informed. They were handed over to the Nedumbassery police. The man was arrested and later released on station bail, the police said. 

A 3-year-old boy died after falling from a 29th floor balcony of a New York City apartment building on Saturday morning, police said a preliminary investigation shows. Officers found the injured toddler lying on a 3rd floor scaffolding after receiving a 911 call at 11.09 am. The boy was taken to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead. “We believe the child exited through a window, but exactly how that occurred is under investigation at the time,” a police spokesperson told The Associated Press. The apartment is located in the Taino Towers residential complex in Harlem.